Become Acquainted with Movie Editing

Hail movie editing lovers! You must have edited some videos, but now you want to step up and wish to edit in a professional environment. So here we are helping you becoming acquainted with movie editor software. We will begin with looking at movie editing environment, the rationale of features you see on screen and how to perform a couple of core operations. Let’s take a plunge into nuts and bolts of movie editing basics.

File Browser

Any thoughts about the File Browser? The title is self-explanatory, yet you must know about it in depth. File Browser is also known as asset browser in other movie editing software. We have a window in our software that helps managing assets. Assets can be categorized into many types. The audio, video, still images and sometimes motion graphics video are assets which can be imported into File Browser. Another useful feature is Bins that look like folder icon-wise; they can also be created and aid you organizing your assets. An essential thing known as Sequences is also managed in File Browser. Sequences are little videos of a scene or scenes that can be exported in one file format. These sequences can further be used to create a long sequence by adding individual sequences in a master sequence. Sequences behave just like variables that are used in programming. All this stuff is stored in File Browser of movie editor while you perform editing.

The Viewer

It is one of the two video windows showing video on the screen in you movie editor software, and this one is on the left side traditionally. Previewing clips, applying edits to clips, creating effects and applying transitions and filters are some of the essential functions of Viewer. It is the place where all gritty work is done. If you do color correcting or apply crossfade transition, all of this is shown in the Viewer.

The Canvas

It is the other window that is placed on the right side of the screen traditionally in any movie editing software. It resembles the Viewer, but its job is pretty simple that is to show the frame in your timeline on which you currently are. You view edits of your video on your Canvas.

The Timeline

It is the space where editing is done in a movie editor. Popping clips in order you like, layering multiple streams of videos, audio playing in the background all of this is performed on the timeline. You have access to Arrow and Blade tool here. Arrow allows you to pick up stuff and move around in the timeline. Blade lets you cut the videos.

How it all works

The master plan is laid on the timeline while more particular work is carried out in Viewer. You can watch the editing on canvas and add stuff on the timeline by dragging from the File Browser. That is how everything functions together. Isn’t it simple? It only looks intimidating because of big buttons and all.

Conclusion

We have presented you the basics of movie editor concisely. Now get a head start and try playing with these features on your movie editing software. Stay tuned to us for upcoming articles on basics of movie editing.